


lost all hope of a happy ending

by harpers_mirror (SapphireBryony)



Series: bad moon rising [1]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, massive bloodshed, seriously heed the archive warnings above, this is just part one of the bleakest timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 06:35:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7211840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireBryony/pseuds/harpers_mirror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>he’s drowning in the overwhelming sense of something about to go terribly wrong</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	lost all hope of a happy ending

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Three Survivors is Enough for a Club](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6833134) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account). 



> I prompted Smilo to write Mr. Cutter/Mr. Koudelka in a universe where either Doug or Renée was dead. She came back with the linked story. We got to talking about what on earth _happened_ that only Doug, Daniel, and Alana made it home alive and 26 hours of plotting later, we had the bones of the Reconstruction 'verse. Here's part one.
> 
> Title taken from "3005" by Childish Gambino.

Everything shifts in an instant.

One moment, Lovelace is ranting about how she can’t take this any more, can’t handle any more of Kepler’s creepy speeches or his mind games or his smug self-satisfaction. And the next, she’s pushing off from the wall and saying something about the armory.

“This has gone far enough,” she mutters, and those words stick with him until his dying day.

He tries to catch at her arm and she shoves him away, harder than she needs to and he goes spinning into the bulkhead, all the air escaping his lungs for a moment. Gasping, he reaches for Lovelace again but she’s already gone.

Minkowski appears beside him and he can’t speak, can’t  _ breathe _ and he’s drowning in the overwhelming sense of something about to go terribly wrong as he points to her which way Isabel has gone. 

He sees his fear mirrored in Renée’s eyes as well, knows that the bloodless tinge of her lips is the only outward expression of that fear that she’ll allow herself right now. And then she’s gone, hurtling down the corridor after their rogue element.

Eiffel forces himself to calm down, to work on getting air back into his damaged lungs.

“Officer Eiffel?” Hera’s voice rings out from the ceiling. “What’s going on? Are you alright?”

“I’m - “ he gasps. “I’m okay, baby.” Another long, deep, steadying breath and then the mask of forced good cheer slips over his voice. “Just gotta go stop Captain Crazy from blowing us all to kingdom come. Again.” He trails a quick, comforting hand along the wall. “It’ll be fine. You gonna stay with me, darlin’?”

“A-always, Officer Eiffel. I literally have no choice in the matter, but - whoa, what’s - “

His heart lurches. “Hera? What’s wrong?”

“Eiffel, it’s Lovelace she has a  - ”

Her voice cuts out and for the second time in as many minutes, he can’t breath. His ears are ringing in the sudden glaring silence.

“Hera?” No response. “HERA! Can you hear me?” No response. “Sweetheart, please answer m-”

“Personality core currently offline,” comes the polite, coldly robotic voice from the speakers. “I cannot take requests right now.” 

A faint drone of unpleasant feedback echoes through the speakers as the words pierce his heart, a nightmare from a thousand dark, lonely nights rearing its head in the light of day. He races towards the bridge, hoping against hope that he is wrong about what Isabel has done but knowing he isn’t. Before he can get there though, a shot rings out from the crew dining room and he abruptly changes course.

There, next to the little gizmo that dispenses their disgusting protein packs, against the table where they’d eaten meals together once upon a time, he finds Lovelace and Kepler grappling over a gun. 

Minkowski hurtles into the room a moment later from a second door. Jacobi is floating, stunned and half-risen from the table where he’d evidently been eating lunch with his boss when Lovelace had stalked in, and Eiffel catches sight of Hilbert lurking near the door to the crew quarters and looking horrified.

Everyone present surrounded the two armed, stubborn, and power-hungry combatants and Eiffel feels that sense of terror and despair swamp him again, pressing in on him from all sides. Desperately, he moves toward them, unsure of what he was going to do but seized with the urge to do  _ something _ before someone got themselves _ killed _ -

A gun cracks once, twice, and a force like a tidal wave crashes into him. Dimly he realizes that it's Minkowski, that she’s still moving from the momentum of shoving him aside. 

Something is wrong. There’s a cloud of red around her. He sees this and shakes his head, disoriented and spinning. How had her hair come loose like that, it had been pulled back tight a minute ago -

A high-pitched whining sound is all he can hear as the cloud spreads and he recognizes it for what it is. He catches her, slows down her trajectory, sees the wound in her stomach, sees her face go pale and tight, pulls her away from the chaos, grabbing frantically at a handful of napkins from the dispenser - have to stop the bleeding, have to make it stop, she's losing too much and he doesn't think Isabel has any to spare this time-

“Eiffel -” she gasps, face twisted in pain. “You...kay?” She’s bleeding everywhere and still checking on him, he’d laugh if he didn't feel like he was dying.

The gun goes off again, painting the wall between the grappling pair a brilliant scarlet. For an agonizing moment, he can't tell which of them got hit, the captain or the colonel - and then Kepler raises his hands to clutch at his throat, hands that instantly fill with streams of blood. Lovelace smiles in triumph, a sick grin that only broadens as Jacobi’s shout of horror echoes through the space - until the dying man seizes her head and neck, smearing them with streaks of red, and gives them a short, vicious twist, snapping with a sickening  _ crack. _ She floats away, limp and something like victory flashes in Kepler’s eyes as he dies.

Eiffel is dimly aware of the screaming filling the room, dimly aware that some of it is coming from him because what the  _ fuck  _ is happening, this has to be a nightmare, his face is numb and his hands continue to fill with Renée’s blood - 

“DOC,” he bellows, remembering Hilbert was nearby. “Doc, get over here  _ right the fuck now.” _

He doesn’t take his eyes of his commander, he’s trying to cradle her head while still keeping pressure on the blood-soaked napkins, and her face is  _ so _ pale and her eyes -

_ No. _

“Minkowski.  _ Minkowski, _ stay with me, come on commander, please. Keep your eyes open and stay with me.  _ HILBERT,  _ come on!” Her eyes flutter weakly open and she’s trying to focus on him, her mouth opens, soundless, and she clutches at his arm.

“You  _ monster,” _ someone growls, and the venom in the voice is enough to make Doug glance up for a split-second. Maxwell is hurtling toward Hilbert -  _ oh fuck _ , where did she get a  _ gun? -  _ with murder in her eyes. “I saw what you did to her, wasn’t once  _ enough?”  _

She raises the gun and fires with absolutely no hesitation. Her hands are shaking but her shot lands true, catching Hilbert in between the eyes. The recoil sends her spinning backwards to hit the bulkhead with a hollow thud and she goes limp. 

Hilbert is dead and Maxwell might be too, their bodies are drifting through the room and screaming rings in his ears and he thinks it might be his. He feels the wetness on his hands and frantically grabs for more napkins, throwing the soaked ones aside but when he looks at Minkowski’s face she’s even paler than before and her eyes are closed. Her freckles stand out in sharp contrast and - 

Renée isn’t breathing. He doesn’t know when that happened, she’d been gasping for air when Maxwell had distracted him.

This isn’t happening. He couldn’t help the others but he will  _ not _ let her die, not like this, not to save  _ him. _ Frantic, fumbling, he tries to remember his long-ago first aid training, breathes for her, and her lips are so cold and touching his own to them feels like a violation of the highest order and she’s still not breathing.

Blood has stopped flowing from her stomach. Shouting her name and shaking her are even less successful than his piss-poor attempt at CPR had been. He's managed to let her down one last -

_No._

He refuses to believe what his eyes tell him. She’s immor - she couldn’t - she’s _Minkowski,_ unstoppable force - the only - the only one who - she _couldn’t -_

Dimly, he hears someone calling his name but his vision is dark around the edges and he can’t see anything other than his commander, floating pale and still and silent in front of him. He feels hands pulling at him, trying to get him to let go of her and he swings blindly, connects with something soft, hears a grunt of pain, and then the hands grab him more firmly.

“She’s gone, Eiffel, you can’t help her, you need to let go of her - ”

“Not leaving her.” His voice sounds thin and hollow, ringing in through a room that, after several minutes of loud and frantic noise, he suddenly realizes is horribly quiet. He tears his gaze away from the woman in his arms and tries to focus on Jacobi, who is still tugging on his arm, trying to pull him away from - 

"I _said_ I'm not leaving her!” he shouts at Jacobi, clinging more tightly to his commander. If he holds on to her, she won't...maybe...she... 

The other man is clutching Maxwell in his arms and looks as shell-shocked as Doug feels. After a moment’s silent consideration of the blood-covered pair, he nods.

“I...I have to take Maxwell to the infirmary and make sure she’s okay. I don’t...” He swallows thickly and then continues, his tone weirdly gentle, even to Eiffel’s hazy consciousness. “I don’t think  _ you _ should be alone in here either, but do what you gotta. We need to get out of here asap though. I’ll be back, Eiffel.” Hoisting Maxwell in his arms more securely, Jacobi makes his way to the hatch and vanishes through it.

Doug is left alone and floating amid the bodies and the blood. His entire body feels wrapped in tingling numbness as he stares blankly around him. He thinks idly that he probably ought to be crying but his eyes remain stubbornly, painfully dry, and he keeps catching himself staring at things around the room without seeing them - the remnants of the meals Kepler and Jacobi had been eating, a notebook Hilbert had dropped, the crumpled handful of napkins he’d grabbed to replace the first and then hadn’t needed.

It’s this last image that snaps him out of his daze and into a sort of hyper-clarity. Everything is almost painfully bright and sharply-focused. Calmly, gently, he lets go of Minkowski’s body and begins cleaning up the mess. She used to always get on his case about leaving trash lying around the station, after all.

This is really the least he could do.

 

* * *

 

They put the rest of the crew into cryo pods in the Hephaestus’s long-term storage bay. Eiffel has to handle Kepler because Jacobi can’t, and Jacobi returns the favor by moving Minkowski’s body. Eiffel feels like he ought to feel something when Jacobi unceremoniously dumps Hilbert’s corpse into one of the pods but the numbness is back so he settles instead for closing the doctor’s eyes and crossing his hands on his chest. Something to feel at least a little mournful, to mark the end of their complicated and bizarre relationship.

Eiffel hesitates before maneuvering Lovelace into the next pod. For her too, for their almost-friendship, he wants to mourn, but all he can think when he looks at her still and blood-smeared face is  _ “This is all your fault. It’s your fault she’s dead, it’s your fault Hera’s gone, it’s your fault I’m alone again.”  _ Throat tight, he slides the cover shut and turns away from her, to find Jacobi about to seal Minkowski’s pod shut.

“Wait,” he tries to say, but the word catches on the lump in his throat and strangles. Swallowing desperately, he tries again. “Jacobi, wait, I- ”

“Sure, man.” Jacobi turns away, pointedly not looking at Kepler’s make-shift tomb and heading out of the room, presumably back to the infirmary to check on Maxwell again. 

Doug hovers in front of his commander, resting a hand on the still-open container. He hesitates, then carefully reaches in and takes her dog tags from around her neck. He slides one tag off the chain, transferring it to his own set. After a moment’s consideration, he also takes the plain silver band from the chain - Minkowski’s wedding ring. Rolling it gently between his fingers, thinking he should take it back home for her husband or something, Doug catches sight of the engraved inscription hidden inside the ring: 

_ Always. _

The tears come at last and it’s a long time before they stop.

 

* * *

 

The ring is joined in his pocket by a frayed piece of wiring after Doug’s brief attempt to fix Hera. He knows it was a doomed effort from the start - he couldn’t fix her last time, and that was with - with help. Maxwell isn’t in any fit state to reconstruct the entire system, and Doug feels the gut-punch of  _ alone alone alone  _ hit him again. He’d thought...he’d held out hope that some miracle would mean Hera could rise from the dead once more.

Evidently, they’ve used up their allotment of miracles.

Hera stays offline. The wire gets looped through the ring and twisted closed, shoved deep into his pocket.

He and Jacobi and Maxwell detach the Urania from the Hephaestus and prepare to leave. Jacobi, who’s been treating him with unusual delicacy since the incident, glances at him.

“Eiffel? Are we ready to go?”

Eiffel takes one last long look at the crumbling space station, a ghost ship now. He looks at the star, bathing everything in an eerie blue glow like the hottest part of a flame, like impossible things made real, and closes his eyes, shutting out the sight.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he mutters. Stalking into the depths of the ship, he shuts himself in the first unused crew cabin he finds, turns off the lights, buries his face in the pillow, and screams himself hoarse as they begin the long journey back to Earth.

**Author's Note:**

> One quick point of clarification, since there was no way to address it in the fic from Eiffel's POV: Lovelace took Hera offline so she couldn't stop her or interfere. The plan was once she'd killed Kepler and Jacobi, Lovelace would force Maxwell to repair her, at gunpoint if need be. Obviously, circumstances intervened. But Hera may not be gone forever - there's a _lot_ more of this story yet to tell.
> 
> (Also, because I promised him credit, many thanks to my lovely boyfriend who not only came up with Smilo's original prompt, but who also did some research on firing guns in space for me. <3)


End file.
